This Presentation gives or tells the brief history of the World Famous Architect, Le Corbusier.

1. A Great epoch has begun.
There exists a new spirit.
Contemporary Architect

2. “Space and light and order. Those are the things that men
need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.”

3. Life story
 Original Name – Charles Edouard Jeanneret.
 Birth Date – October 6, 1887.
 Birth Place – LaChaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
 Second son of Edourad Jeanneret (dial painter)
and Madame Jeanneret-Perrct (teacher).
 Influence - His family's Calvinism, love of the arts,
and enthusiasm for the Jura Mountains.
 His Master - Charles L'Eplattenier, a teacher
at the local art school.
 At thirteen, Le Corbusier abandoned matchmaking, and continued his studies in art
and decoration, with the intention of becoming a painter.
 Insisted by his master to study architecture.
 Pioneer in studies of modern high design.
 Dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of the crowded
cities.

4. Contd…
 1920’s – adopted his pseudonym.
 Architecture teacher in the art school – Rene Chapallaz.
 1907 – traveled to Paris – found work in the office of Augeste Perret, the French
pioneer of Reinforced Concrete.
 1908 – Studied architecture.
 Between October 1910 and March 1911 – worked for renowned architect, Peter
Behrens near Berlin.
 Taught at his old school during World War I.
 Worked in theoretical architectural studies using modern techniques.
 Began his own architectural practice in 1922 with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret –
partnership lasting 50 years.
 Established a new artistic movement, Purism in collaboration with Cubist painter,
Amedee Ozenfant.
 Between 1918 & 1922, no building – concentrating his efforts on Purist theory and
painting.

5. Contd…
 1929 – Met entertainer and actress Josephine Baker while returning from South
America to Europe.
 Practiced sketches by drawing nude images of Baker.
 Married Yvonne Gallis, a dressmaker and fashion model – died in 1957.
 Had a long extramarital affair with Swedish-American heiress Marguerite Tjader
Harris.
 His first house, Villa Pallet.
 In Switzerland – designed a series of villas &
embarked on a more theoretical study for a
structural frame of reinforced concrete. VILLA PALLET
 Envisaged it as an affordable, prefabricated
system for the construction of new housing – wake of World War I’s destruction.
 Developed with the help of Max Dubois and Perret, the system differed from the
then standard Hennibique frame in its idealization of floors as flat slabs without
exposed beams.

6. Contd…
 At the end of war – moved to Paris – worked on concrete structures under
Government contracts – also ran a small brick manufacturing.
 Dedicated most of his efforts to the more influential, and lucrative, discipline of
painting.
 Proposed an architecture – satisfying both the demands of industrial and the
timeless concerns of architectural form.
 Included the first city plan, the Contemporary city.
 Proposed two housing types
CONTEMPORARY CITY
Vaulted Maison
Maison Citrohan
Monol

7. ARCHITECTURE CAREER
 During 1920’s – realized his first mature architecture in a series of villas.
 Foundation of architecture – Dom-ino House (1914-1915)
 Proposed an open floor plan consisting of concrete slabs supported by a minimal number of thin,
reinforced concrete columns around the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one
side of the floor plan.
DOM-INO HOUSE

8. IDEAS

9. IDEAS
 The Modular:
 Use of Golden ratio for the scale of architectural proportion.
 Use of human measurements, Fibonacci series and the double unit.
○ E.g..:- 1927 Villa Stein, Graches.
 Placed system of harmony
VILLA STEIN
and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy.
 Furniture:
“Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois”
 Started experimenting in 1928.

10. influence
 Most influential in the sphere of urban planning.
 City of the future – large apartment buildings isolated in a park like setting on
pilotis.
 Heavily influenced by problems he saw in industrial cities at the turn of 19th to 20th
century.
 Leader of the modernist movement to create better living conditions & a better
society through housing concepts.

11. Carpenter center
 It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
 Building type – University art center.
 It is built with the reinforced cast-in-place concrete masonry.
 It is his only major building in the United States – designed to house classes in
architecture, film and other arts.

12. Contd…
 It is designed with the collaboration of Chilean architect Guillermo Jullian de la
Fuente.
 The building was completed in 1963.
 He never actually saw the building.
 No architecture style was involved in it.
 It is governed by the Harvard University.
 Its wonderful collection of concrete forms bring together
many of the design principles and devices from his earlier
works.
 Its concrete has a smooth, precise finish; tall, thin columns
break up its interior spaces.
 A great curvilinear ramp bisects the structure and connects
the main stair and an exhibition space.

13. Contd…
 At the heart is the cubic volume from which curved studios pull away from one
another on the diagonal.
 The whole is cut through by an S-shaped ramp which rises from one street and
descends towards the other.
 The layers and levels swing out and back from the grid of concrete pilotis
within, making most of cantilevering to create interpenetrations of exterior and
interior.
 Also a sequence of spatial events is linked by the promenade architecture of the
ramp.

14. Contd…
 From Quincy street there are two possible approaches to the building: up the ramp
or down to the main gallery entrance.
 The ramp was intended to be the centerpiece of the building, taking people directly
to its center.
 This ramp provides an impressive experience.
 Different type of lightings was designed at different times of day.
 The use of concrete pilotis elevated the building above the ground.
 The pilotis extended the landscape beneath the building.
 When site plan was being drawn up, he suggested that all the tree locations be
marked with a high level of precision.
 But, in the final design, he aligned some of the pilots with the existing tress.
 The pilotis vary in diameter throughout the building, depending on the load they are
forced to carry.
 In many places these pilotis are designed to give the building a feeling of freedom.

15. Contd…

16. Contd…
 It was built with a philosophical belief that a visual arts building should demostrate
innovation and creativity.
 There is a definite relationship between the brick of the surrounding buildings and
the concrete and glass of the carpenter center.
 Unlike brick, the light colored concrete reflects morning sun and captures
afternoon shadows, from trees and other elements.
 The curved surface of the concrete compress or elongate these shadows, giving
them visual life as the angle of the sun changes.

17. Contd…
 Extensive cantilevering and a reliance on reinforced concrete to create large areas
of open space.
 It is fully of load-bearing columns.
 All the five levels of the building are designed to be configurable through movable
partitions.
 Every time you go, you see a new thing in this building.

18. Contd…

19. Contd…

20. Contd…

21. Centre Le Corbusier
•The Centre Le Corbusier or Heidi Weber
Museum is an art
museum in Zürich (Switzerland) dedicated to
the work of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier.
•This building should exhibit his works of art in
an ideal environment created by the architect
himself.
•It is the last building designed by Le
Corbusier marking a radical change of his
achievement of using concrete and stone,
framed in steel and glass, in the 1960s created
as a signpost for the future.
•Le Corbusier made intensive use of
prefabricated steel elements combined with
multi-coloured enamelled plates fitted to the
central core, and above the complex he designed
a 'free-floating' roof to keep the house protected
from the rain and the sun.

22. •The Centre Le Corbusier is a
"Gesamtkunstwerk", i.e. a total work of
art, and reflects the harmonic unity of
Le Corbusier's architecture,
sculptures, paintings, furniture designs
and his writings which is unique and
possibly the only one such existing
structure in the world.
•The museum is listed as a Swiss
heritage site of national significance.[1]

23. Villa Savoye
•Villa Savoye (French
pronunciation: [sa'vwa]) is
a modernist villa in Poissy, in
the outskirts ofParis, France.
•It was designed
by Swiss architects Le
Corbusier and Pierre
Jeanneret, and built between
1928 and 1931
•A manifesto of Le Corbusier's
"five points" of new architecture,
the villa is representative of the bases of
modern architecture, and is one of the
most easily recognizable and renowned
examples of the International style.

24. •The Villa Savoye is probably Corbusier's
best known building from the 1920s, it had
enormous influence on international
modernism.
•It was designed addressing his
emblematic "Five Points", the basic tenets
in his new architectural aesthetic:
•Support of ground-level pilotis,
elevating the building from the earth
and allowed an extended continuity of
the garden beneath.
•Functional roof, serving as a garden
and terrace, reclaiming for nature the
land occupied by the building.
•Free floor plan, relieved of load-
bearing walls, allowing walls to be
placed freely and only where
aesthetically needed.
•Long horizontal windows, providing
illumination and ventilation.
•Freely-designed facades, serving as
only as a skin of the wall and windows
and unconstrained by load-bearing
considerations.

25. •Unlike his earlier town villas Corbusier was able to
carefully design all four sides of the Villa Savoye in
response to the view and the orientation of the sun.
•On the ground floor he placed the main entrance hall,
ramp and stairs, garage, chauffeur and maids rooms.
•At first floor the master bedroom, the son's bedroom,
guest bedroom, kitchen, salon and external terraces.
•The salon was orientated to the north west whilst the
terrace faced the south.
•The son's bedroom faced the south east and the kitchen
and service terrace were on the north east.
•At second floor level were a series of sculpted spaces that
formed a solarium.

26. Chandigarh
In 1950 invited by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to design the
city.
Chandigarh – Provisional capital of Punjab.
Commencing of work started in 1951 until his death in 1965.
Design
• Grid Iron Plan
• Hierarchy of movement from highways to pedestrian walkways.
• Metaphor of a human being.
• Head – Capital Complex.
• Heart – Commercial Centre.
• Arms – Academic and Leisure Facilities.
• Incorporated his principles of light, space and greenary.

27. Contd…

28. Contd…
 Divided the city into different sectors.
 Each sector having the residential and commercial zones.
 Planning was done in such a way that a tourist can also find his own way.
 Maps displayed along the walkways and footpaths.
 Roads
 Designed and oriented in such a way that most of the time during the day, they are under shadow.
 Huge parking areas for the commercial zones.
 Parking lanes – broad as main roads.
 Pedestrian walkways segregated from the
main road with the help of wide lawn strip.
 Huge gardens along the main roads.

29. Urban and Architectural Work of Le Corbusier in Chandigarh
•The city of Chandigarh is situated at
the base of the Shiwalik Range of the
Himalayas, at 333m above sea level,
approximately 260 km northwest of
India's capital, New Delhi.
•The site is a gently sloping plain, with
two seasonal rivulets - Patiali-ki-Rao
and Sukhna Choe -marking its
northwest and southeast boundaries.
• The city forms the urban core of the
"Union Territory of Chandigarh", which
has a total area of 114 sq km. All of the
urban and architectural work of Le
Corbusier listed in this document is
located within Chandigarh's "Phase
One", an area of approximately 70 sq.
km. which can be regarded as the city's
"Historic Core."

30. •The most significant role played by Le
Corbusier in Chandigarh was in conceiving
the city's present urban form.
•It is the well-ordered matrix of his generic
‘neighborhood unit' and the hierarchical
circulation pattern of his ‘7Vs' that has
given Chandigarh its distinctive character.
•The Matrix comprises a regular grid of the
fast traffic V3 roads which define each
neighbourhood unit, the ‘Sector'.
•The Sector itself was conceived as a self-
sufficient and - in a radical departure from
other precedents and contemporarous
concepts - a completely introverted unit,
but was connected with the adjoining ones
through its V4 - the shopping street, as well
as the bands of open space that cut across •The vertical green belts, with the
in the opposite direction. pedestrian V7, contained sites for
•Day-to-day facilities for shopping, schools and sports activities.
healthcare, recreation and the like were
arrayed along the V4 - all on the shady
side.

31. •Besides determining the city's urban form, Le Corbusier, as the "Spiritual
Director" of the entire Chandigarh Capitol Project, was also responsible for
designing the key ‘Special Areas' of the city, each of which contains several
individual buildings.
•The most significant of these is the ‘Capitol Parc' - the ‘head' and la raison
d'être of the entire enterprise.
•A parallel undertaking - one of almost equal significance as the Capitol, was
Le Corbusier's design of the city's ‘heart', the City Centre. In time, the design
of the ‘Cultural Complex' along the ‘Leisure Valley', including the Government
Museum and Art Gallery and the College of Art (L-C's Centre for Audio-visual
Training), as well as some other smaller works (such as the Boat Club and
parts of the Sukhna Lake, which essentially were seen as integral parts of
the Capitol parc) were also undertaken by him.

32. National Museum of Western Art
•The National Museum of Western
Art is the premier public art
gallery in Japan specializing in art from
the Western tradition.
•The Museum is located in the museum
and zoo complex in Ueno Park in Taito,
central Tokyo.
•This popular Tokyo museum is also
known by the English acronym NMWA
(National Museum of Western Art).
•Externally the building is clad in
prefabricated concrete panels which sit on
U-shaped frames supported by the inner
wall. T
•The building generally is constructed of
reinforced concrete and the columns have
a smooth concrete finish.

33. •The museum is square in plan with the main
body of the galleries raised on piloti to first
floor level. The layout is influenced by Le
Corbusier's Sanskar Kendra museum in
Ahmedabad which was being designed at the
same time.
•Entrance for visitors is at ground floor level
via the 19th Century Hall.
•This double height space is lit from above
with a north glazed pyramidal skylight
intersected with reinforced concrete beams
and a column.
•On the opposite side of the hall from the
entrance, the ascent to the paintings gallery is
via a promenade ramp which affords better
views of Rodin's scupltures.
•The paintings gallery wraps around 19th
Century Hall, the ceiling is initially low but is
raised to two storeys around the perimeter to
display the paintings.

34. •There are also balconies at this level that push back into the 19th Century Hall to
re-orient the visitor.
•Le Corbusier designed the paintings gallery to be lit by natural daylight via four
lighting troughs, but these are no longer used and the galleries are now artificially lit.